COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — Red, yellow and orange flowers atop white tablecloth-covered conference room tables were the first hint it was a big day at Piedmont Columbus Regional’s Midtown Campus. Seated and chattering excitedly were 44 nurses, ready to celebrate the end of their year-long residency program at Piedmont.
As they waited for speeches to begin at 10 a.m. on July 7, a projector screen displayed each nurse’s picture and nurses were able to grab refreshments including fruit and chips. The graduates also reflected on their training.
“We learned something new every day, multiple times a day,” said Gabrielle Basa, originally from Macon, Georgia and a nurse at Piedmont’s Cartersville urgent care facility. While she admitted there’s still a lot she has to learn on the job, she no longer feels dread at the challenge.
Basa said, “I feel like I’m in a safe environment right now to continue learning.”
Her peers Amanda Loretta Defer of Pittsfield, Massachusetts and Casey Jones of Smiths Station, Alabama expressed similar feelings.
Defer reflected on a particularly meaningful patient experience in which a man came to the ER in critical condition and repeatedly told her, “I don’t want to die, I’m not ready yet.”
“We were actually able to kind of prevent all that and he ended up going home a day later, which made me feel really good,” said Defer, who was also a guest speaker, alongside Jones, during the Summer 2022 Cohort of Nurse Residents ceremony.
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All 44 of Piedmont's Summer 2022 Nursing Cohort graduates. (Olivia Yepez) -
From left to right: Gabrielle Basa, Casey Jones and Amanda Loretta Defer. (Olivia Yepez) -
Piedmont staff joined to celebrate the nurses' graduation. (Olivia Yepez) -
Nurses chatted as a projector showed their pictures ahead of speeches. (Olivia Yepez)
In her speech, Defer talked about the challenges of embarking on nursing careers on the heels of the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I can honestly say we are a different breed of nursing … talk about resilience,” Defer said to her peers. She was grateful Piedmont’s program had given them a platform to voice questions and concerns for the future of medical training.
In fact, because of feedback from the 2022 cohort, Residency Coordinator Amalia Acevedo-Sanic told the nurses, subsequent classes would receive updated seminar programming. This will include a “med search bootcamp” the previous class did not receive.
Nevertheless, Acevedo-Sanic encouraged nurses to keep taking advantage of Piedmont’s learning opportunities, including an upcoming 12-week womb care certification program. She noted the hospital would pay for this training.
“It’s so important to continue to learn. … Anything you can put your hands on, do it, because that’s where you gotta gain your skills and that’s how you’re gonna learn and nobody will ever be able to take that away from you,” said Piedmont Northside’s Inpatient Director of Nursing Amanda Mcdonald as she addressed the cohort.
Overall, Jones said he felt confident about his residency experience at Piedmont. “I never once felt neglected in anyway, or like my questions or thoughts were insignificant,” he said, adding he would recommend training at Piedmont for new nurses.
The ceremony also included a statement by Chief Nursing Officer Carey Burcham, who remarked he did not get to experience a nursing residency program because not every healthcare organization offers one. Burcham said Piedmont’s program builds strong practice foundations which will help the nurses throughout their careers as they move from newbie nurses to experts within the next decade.
The ceremony ended with 11 presentations of evidence-based projects which the nurses conducted during their residencies, eithers as individuals or groups. Topics covered everything from anesthesia scoring to induced delirium and bed repositioning.
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